N.h. Governor Asks France For Indian`s Remains

July 12, 1985|By New York Times News Service.

CONCORD, N.H. — At the request of an Indian minister, Gov. John H. Sununu is asking French authorities to find the remains of a 17th-Century Indian chief, sent to a Paris museum in the 1820s, and to return them to New Hampshire for reburial. A spokesman for the governor`s office said that the request would be made through the French consul general in Boston.

The request originated with the Rev. Beverly Bolding of Goffstown, also known as Shaman Pee Mee, minister of the Native American Mother Earth Indian Church in Goffstown. As Shaman, she says, she represents some 1,200 people of American Indian ancestry in New Hampshire.

In addition, several months ago Bolding asked the governor`s office to designate land as a ``reburial ground`` for Indian remains that are uncovered in archeological or other excavations.

The Indian leader whose remains are being sought from France was Passaconaway, the overall chief of the Pejacook confederacy of Algonquin tribes in the Northeast. He lived from about 1575 to 1665 and was buried on Cartagena Island in the Merrimack River, just south of Manchester.

In 1821, two Bedford archeologists, Peter Woodbury and Freeman Riddle, excavated the burial spot and sent the remains to the Museum of Natural History in Paris, according to the governor`s office. In 1928, inquiries about the bones suggested that they still were at the museum, according to representatives of the Indian community.